


the more it heals the worse it hurts

by fairytalelights



Category: The Maze Runner (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Fix-It, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Nightmares, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-18
Updated: 2018-02-18
Packaged: 2019-03-21 00:19:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13729125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairytalelights/pseuds/fairytalelights
Summary: “You're okay,” Thomas starts sobbing, even though Newt's unconscious and can't hear him. “You're okay, you're going to be fine, I promise.”“Do you want me to take him to the others? You know, just in case you wanna-” Brenda asks, looking warily up at the building looming over them.Thomas stares down at Newt. He's never been more sure of an answer in his life.“No,” he says. “I'm gonna bring him home.”or, Newt lives. They try to figure it out.





	the more it heals the worse it hurts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rasputisa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rasputisa/gifts).



> I've watched all of the movies over the course of this weekend and didn't want it to end like this, so this is a fix-it in which Newt lives. Everything from that scene onwards didn't happen in this version. (So, like, the last twenty minutes or something of the third movie.)  
> (Also, since I've just read the first book a long time ago, this is based solely on the movies.)
> 
> This is for you Isa, thank you for showing me the beauty that is Thomas/Newt. And for making [this beautiful playlist](https://open.spotify.com/user/isahasselhoff/playlist/58AhTOFPMenwjvye5J4c1l) for this fic. Give it a listen, guys!

The world is exploding around him, but Thomas' world has narrowed down to just Newt. He needs just a little bit longer. He has to keep him, has to keep them both, from dying for just a little bit longer, just until-

Thomas looks up. For a moment he thinks he's hallucinating, but standing there, like a guardian angel emerging from the flames, is Brenda, a small bottle in her hand.

“You can save him,” she says, as she pulls a syringe from her jacket and drops down to her knees next to him. “If Teresa wasn't lying, your blood can save him, but for now, this can slow it down.”

Thomas grabs the syringe from her, his hands shaking when he tries to fill it with the serum.

Newt is on the ground beneath him, crazed and trying to attack him one second, crying and begging for Thomas to kill him the next.

Right now he is twisting and turning, clawing at Thomas' legs and trying to twist free where he is using all of his weight to keep him down.

Brenda grabs his arms, setting off another wild thrashing, and then Thomas just pushes the syringe into his arm.

For a few moments, nothing happens, Newt's veins are still shimmering black, the world is still exploding around them and there is nothing Thomas can do anymore, nothing except hold on.

“It's okay,” he keeps muttering, grabbing Newt's face in his hands and pressing their foreheads together. “Shh, calm down, I'm here, I'm here, I'm not gonna leave you, never gonna leave you, I promise, I promise.” He isn't sure when exactly he started crying, isn't sure if he'll ever be able to stop.

Suddenly, Newt calms down, the fight leaving him completely, his body going lax in Thomas' hold. Brenda lets go of his arms and takes a step back.

The black blood in his veins is starting to fade.

“You're okay,” Thomas starts sobbing, even though Newt's unconscious and can't hear him. “You're okay, you're going to be fine, I promise.”

“Do you want me to take him to the others? You know, just in case you wanna-” Brenda asks, looking warily up at the building looming over them.

Thomas stares down at Newt. He's never been more sure of an answer in his life.

“No,” he says. “I'm gonna bring him home.”

 

One of their allies has the right medical equipment to use Thomas' blood in the same way that saved Brenda months ago. He allows her to take a bit more blood than is necessary for just Newt, to save a few other infected in their camp, but when she asks him about where he wants to go next, if he wants to spread the cure even beyond their walls, he just shrugs helplessly.

“Soon,” he answers. “I'm gonna come back to donate more blood soon, I promise. I just... can't leave. Not right now.”

He hides away from her judging eyes and waits in the other part of the medical tent until Newt wakes up.

 

When he does, it's painful. He croaks out, “Tommy,” and Thomas buries his face in his chest and isn't sure he'll ever let go again.

 

They don't really talk about it, Newt nearly dying. They don't talk about how they fought and screamed and cried and they don't talk about how when Newt woke up, Thomas grabbed his shirt just a bit too tight and they both didn't let go of each other until a nurse separated them.

Instead of talking, they settle into a routine of keeping a close eye on each other, flinching when someone appears next to them suddenly, and reaching out for reassuring touches a lot more often than would be strictly necessary.

 

Wood doesn’t make for a very soundproof wall, Thomas learns, when he hears Newt scream in his sleep every night, even though they both have their own neat little huts next to each other now, where they visit each other during the day. But never at night, when the fear won’t let Thomas sleep at all and brings nightmares to Newt.

At first, he tries to ignore the screaming, but one night, where sleep won't come, as it usually doesn't these days, there is an ear piercing sound and then-

“TOMMY, TOMMY, NO, DON'T!” and just like that, Thomas is out of his bed in a second, kicking in Newt's makeshift door, crawling into bed next to him and holding on to as much of him as he can.

“I'm here, I'm here, I'm not gonna leave you,” he mumbles in a devastating echo from the night he almost lost him, but he's never meant the words more than he does right this second.

They still don't talk about it, but from then on, they stop sleeping in separate beds during the night, stop pretending that they can.

 

They talk about Teresa once.

“Do you think she's still alive?” Newt asks, with that same unreadable look on his face he always gets when Teresa is brought up.

It's not a particularly charged situation, they are just sitting next to each other by the camp fire, their empty dinner plates discarded on the ground. Someone has brought out bottles of alcohol they got at their last supply run.

They both haven't had much to drink, at least not enough to have this conversation, Thomas thinks.

“I don't know,” he answers honestly. “I hope so,” he admits. Newt face does a weird twist at that, and Thomas can't help but reach out his hand, covering Newt's.

“Not because I want to see her again. Just because I hope she's still out there, safe. That her betrayal at least didn't cost her her life.” He pauses. “Do you want her to be dead?” he asks then, carefully.

Newt looks down at that, quiet for a moment. “No,” he admits.

They don't talk about her anymore after that but it feels like for once, that's just because there's nothing more to say on the subject. They've both made their peace with that particular piece of their past.

 

Turns out building up a new society out of a few tents is a tedious task. It doesn't help that almost all of them are still kids, traumatized kids nonetheless.

The few adults in their camp try their best, but they can't play babysitter all day long, so Thomas and Newt take it on themselves to take care of a few of the younger ones.

Newt turns out to be good at teaching them, at first just simple things, like how to prepare meals and how to fix their tents, but when some kids bring books, he reads out loud to them, because there aren't enough books for all of them to have one.

Sometimes though, during one of their “book club meetings” (as Thomas has jokingly dubbed them) or just while sitting around the fire, one of the kids will get a vacant look in their eyes, look around in panic or scream. A few of them regularly burst into tears at seemingly harmless moments.

Thomas starts talking to them afterwards, gently, carefully. He tries to make them smile again, and then he tries to find out what makes them get better, if they need to talk about what happened or if it's better for them to forget it for now.

“It makes sense,” Newt says one night, lying next to Thomas. They are not tangled up together, not yet, even though they always end up that way in the morning. “All of them have PTSD. They need a counselor, someone to talk to. Couldn't think of anyone better for the job than you.”

Thomas smiles slightly and doesn't answer. They pretend like the other kids in camp are the only ones in need of some counseling.

 

Of course, all of that not-talking they are doing only gets them so far.

“Why aren't you sleeping?” Newt asks one night, after his nightmare has woken him up only moments ago.

“Who says I wasn't sleeping?” Thomas replies, but it comes out tired and defeated and he doesn't put much energy into the retort. Newt also seems to think it was a weak attempt, because he just fixes him with an exasperated look before he settles down again, pressing his face into Thomas' shoulder. After nightmares, they are usually both too emotionally drained to keep up the distance they try to maintain when going to sleep.

“Just go to sleep,” Newt whispers, before nodding away again.

 _I can't_ , Thomas wants to scream at him. _I need to wait until I'm one-hundred percent sure you're still breathing next to me until I can even consider it._

 

It's one of the rare nights where Thomas manages to pass out for a few hours, exhaustion tearing at his consciousness until he can't fight it anymore.

A punch to the chest and load screaming wakes him up again and it takes him a few moments to place where he is, not the maze, not an empty warehouse in the desert, not WCKD.

Newt is screaming next to him though, punching his fists desperately against every part of his body that he can reach, missing and hitting the bedding half of the time.

Without thinking, Thomas grabs his arms.

“Wake up, Newt, you're safe, please, wake up,” he repeats, again and again, like he has a thousand times before.

When Newt finally opens his eyes, he doesn't deflate or calm down like he usually does, he just breaks into tears, violent, hysterical sobs and the only time Thomas has ever felt this helpless was in front of a WCKD building, a city burning around him and a boy almost dying in his arms.

After a few minutes that feel like hours, Thomas can make out words in Newt's mumblings.

“Don't leave me, Tommy, you can't leave me, please don't, please don't, don't leave me,” he's still crying, quieter now, but still making awful, broken sounds.

“I won't, I won't, I never will, I promise, baby,” Thomas tries to soothe him desperately, realising the pet name he just let slip just a second too late.

Newt doesn't seem to have heard him, or maybe he did, because a second later his lips are on Thomas'. Newt kisses like he fought when he thought he was dying, desperately, like this is his last chance, like he'll never get to do it again. Thomas can taste salt and he can still hear wretched sobs in between kisses.

“Please, let me,” Newt mumbles and Thomas can only answer, “anything, would give you anything, just ask,” before he turns Newt's sobs into moans instead.

 

Afterwards, Thomas sleeps. Newt doesn't have another nightmare that night.

 

“What does it mean?” Thomas asks in the morning, and this is progress, this one sentence is already the most they've ever talked about this _thing_ between them.

“What do you want it to mean?” Newt replies and he would sound nonchalant and cool, but Thomas knows him, and he sees how scared he is.

Thomas is done with being scared. “Everything. To me, it means everything.”

He gets a kiss in broad daylight as an answer.

 

 

“You know I have to go and help them make a cure, right?” Thomas asks.

They are sitting on the shore, legs tangled. Up until this point they've just been quietly staring at the sea, breathing in the safety of each other's company.

It's been a beautiful sunny day, filled with laughter and kisses and happiness. Way too much happiness for him to ruin it by starting this conversation.

“Maybe not today, not tomorrow, but at some point I'm gonna have to leave.”

Newt just looks at him. “I don't think I ever told you, but when I thought I was gonna die out there, I wrote you a letter. And the things I said in that letter were true when I almost died, they were true the first moment I saw you in the maze and they are true now. I would follow you anywhere.”

He takes Thomas' hand in his.

Thomas looks down at their hands, then up at the sea again. “We'll still be safe, right? As long as we're together?”

“Yeah,” Newt replies. “As long as we're together.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from "Dynasty" by MIIA.  
> (I'm here on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/likefairytale) and on [Tumblr](https://lookslikefairytale.tumblr.com), if you wanna say hi.)


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